an independent music community

Welcome

diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!

If you don’t know, I kinda have a little obsession with The Skull Defekts. Especially their new album, The Temple, which totally twisted everything I thought I knew about rock music. The Idealist is Joachim Nordwall, who plays guitar and sings in the Defekts. However I Am The Fire is most certainly not rock music. Shit, there isn’t a beat to be found on this record. It’s all ambient noise drone awesomeness and it’s fucking grand.

I think the best way to tackle this is on a song by song basis because each one is so drastically different than the rest. It starts out with the comparatively short “The Knives Are My Eyes” and tricks you into thinking The Fire might be a shimmery blissful record. Well, you’d be wrong. The rest of the tracks are dark almost-but-not-quite doom drone. “To Make Exact Copies Of Every Mistake Ever Made” is 17 and a half minutes of throbbing, pulsing, rumbling beasts in the pitch black night, never changing course. The beginning is the same as the end and it could go on forever without you even knowing it had killed you in your wide-eyed hypnosis.

“I Am Not Here” is 100% oscillation, totally fucking with your sense of direction and perception. One minute you’re face down in the dirt and the next you’re standing gazing at the stars. The latter half of the song continues the mind fuckery but in a more static way. The kind of thing that you probably wouldn’t hear if you were in a car or train, even with headphones on.

My favorite track is “The Cranium” which is absolutely terrifying. It sounds like capital punishment via an electric room, which would be similar to the electric chair except this room would be more like a Tesla laboratory and you’d die from lethal amounts static electricity. I’m pretty sure this is what that room would sound like on the inside (minus the agonizing screams).

And then there’s the weird as fuck “The Declaraaation Of Indeeependence” which sounds like it was recorded in the ’30s by some batshit insane swamp hermit who used his swamp gas and swamp frog friends to accompany his ultimate manifesto. And there’s almost 15 minutes of that stuff. Just some guy ranting and babbling in a blown out language that I’m pretty sure is neither English nor Swedish. This is the sort of thing you’d find playing on a phonograph in the back room of a legit haunted house.

I Am The Fire finishes off with the appropriately titled “My Head Is On Fire.” Appropriate because if you are the fire, then clearly your head is also the fire. It’s a nice closer because it cleanses your aural palate from all that crazy shit you just heard. It’s the motionless thunder before the tornado hits. The white noise you hear when you all else is silent. Preparing you for round 2.

Posted: 07|14|09 at 7:26 pm.
Filed under: record reviews.
Comments and pings are currently closed.

Justin Snow

Justin resides on Lon Lon Ranch in Massachusetts with his wife and two magical bunnies who help him raise a herd of lifegiving milk cows. A childhood encounter with the evil lord Ganondorf brought about his love of music genres involving the words DOOM, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. Justin also enjoys watching films, playing Ludo and eating popsicles.